Archaeology Lecture with Jeffrey Becker, “Situating the Roman City"

Jeffrey Becker (Binghamton University - SNY) will join us to speak on “Situating the Roman city: form and function”. Refreshments will be available from 12-12:30 and the lecture will be from 12:30-2. Join us in person or on Zoom!

Lecture Abstract:

The landscapes of Republican Italy are often characterized in relation to the phenomena of urbanism, particularly those related to the expansion of the Roman state. The establishment of colonies under various legal frameworks transforms “pre-Roman” landscapes into “Roman” ones, following the conventional narrative. The “Roman city” thus becomes not simply a place but also a node in a socio-economic network that reshapes the Italian peninsula and the wider Mediterranean. Finding Romanness in all of this expansion is also often a desideratum, often in the hopes of being able to expertly unravel the phenomena of urban expansion into independent cultural threads. The Romans themselves were also looking for identity in these threads, coming to define their world and themselves in terms of urban vs. non-urban dichotomies. An examination of middle to late Republican instances of urbanism in light of later Republican identity building can help in situating the topos of the Roman city and in understanding its forms and functions.